How Solugen is Saving the $5 Trillion Chemical Industry (Co-founders Gaurab Chakrabarti & Sean Hunt)

The Peel with Turner Novak

Gaurab Chakrabarti and Sean Hunt are the Co-founders of Solugen, which replaces petroleum based products with plant-derived substitutes without sacrificing affordability or performance. They met playing poker in college, kickstarted the company with $10k from an MIT pitch competition, and have since scaled the business to over nine-figures in revenue.

Solugen has raised over $642 million from investors like Fifty Years, Lowercarbon Capital, Founders Fund, Refactor Capital, and Cantos Ventures.

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Topics discussed:

• How the chemicals industry touches 25% of US GDP
• Why the industry is like real estate: fragmented and focused on asset utilization
• The reason chemicals companies have terrible NPS scores
• How Solugen’s manufacturing process converts plants and C02 into chemicals
• Meeting over a game of poker while getting their PhD’s
• Winning $10k from an MIT pitch competition to capture 10% of the float spa market in Dallas, Texas
• Why the first wave of Cleantech startup fail
• Why logistics and supply chain are the biggest problems in Chemicals
• Their framework for thinking big, but taking little steps to get there
• Running their homemade metal catalyst reactor at YC Demo Day
• Launching, scaling, and selling a CPG wipes company to prove their chemicals worked
• Building their first factory (the BioForge) on the site of an exploded wax distillery
• Their strategy for getting large, multinational companies to try their products

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Referenced:

• YC Application video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tItLPnLIH4o
• Solugen - The First Carbon Negative Molecule Factory: https://jeffburke.substack.com/p/solugen-the-first-carbon-negative
• Solugen - The Century of Biology: https://centuryofbio.com/p/solugen

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Where to find Gaurab:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/gaurabc
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaurabchakrabarti

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Where to find Sean:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TungstenSeanide
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huntsean

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Where to find Turner:

• Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak

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